When we saw the callout for the Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre Fellowship, we thought it could be an opportunity to attempt something entirely different from what we’ve made before. We both work largely in theatre, as writers, directors and dramaturgs, but have an interest in experimenting with work that includes performance, but could be … Read more…

The Co-Creating Liveness in Embodied Immersion Research Group (CLEI), within the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences (FLAS) at the University of Greenwich, looked to opening up ways in which multiple types of stakeholders might come together to identify new practice-based research and Knowledge Exchange projects. This built on research Becoming civic centred – A … Read more…

How can researchers draw methodological inspiration from the communities they study? We have recently come to the end of a two-year project based on a case study of Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL), an organisation where creativity, art and design are embedded within organisational culture and everyday practice. Despite having very few artistic talents or crafting … Read more…

I want to start by saluting the community of practice and expertise which has been built through the event which took place recently on The Power of Collaborative Action: People, Place, Planet. I value enormously the work of NCACE in convening this group, and Research England and David Sweeney’s leadership in supporting this inspired initiative. … Read more…

What if citizens were not seen merely as beneficiaries of research but were instead considered as leaders and initiators? At a recent NCACE ‘What if?’ event, facilitated by Suzie Leighton, we explored the theoretical and practical implications of this question. The concept for this event had emerged from a year-long conversation between Robert Crawshaw and Bambo … Read more…

We are delighted to present our NCACE Annual Report 2020/21, providing an informative overview of our first year outcomes involving more than 1,200 people who came together in a dozen events and activities covering our key five areas of work. Our first chapter highlights the key involvement of our Regional Partners in our work on … Read more…

Discussions we have around cultural knowledge exchange collaborations often involve a focus on geography – whether that be physical boundaries, or the sense of place of an area. Much of the work at NCACE this last year has focused on our ‘Placemaking and levelling out’ theme – one of the four core themes guiding our … Read more…

While the Research and Excellence Framework (REF) has been devised primarily as an instrument to assess the quality of university research and of institutional research environments, the information collected is rapidly proving an invaluable source of qualitative information about the type of research that universities do, and how this generates real-world impact. In particular, the … Read more…

On 20th January 2022, NCACE hosted the fifth Evidence Café under the title ‘Cultural Knowledge Exchange and the Climate Emergency’. NCACE aims to build a more comprehensive evidence base around knowledge exchange (KE) between Higher Education and the arts and culture sectors. The Evidence Café is hosted within the context of the Evidencing and Impact … Read more…

Following on from the NCACE Ideas Pool Open Call ‘Co-Creating a New and Different Future for Arts / Higher Education Collaboration’ in the Autumn of 2021, inviting NCACE Micro-Commission applications, the team is delighted to announce that four awards have been allocated to university and arts/cultural sector partnerships this January 2022.  Outcomes from the four … Read more…